


Young Ionia

by spectacledotter



Category: League of Legends
Genre: 5 Idiots and a Fuckload of Cutlery, Developing Friendships, Ensemble Cast, Gen, Heavy Plot Focus, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-23 11:16:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18151154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spectacledotter/pseuds/spectacledotter
Summary: The shadow reaper, the rogue assassin, the blade dancer, the charmer, and the rebel. Little connects them but their homeland, but that will need to be even ground when old enemies return and the First Lands' new generation of warriors need to work together. Underestimated, undermined, and misunderstood by their elders at every turn, they must fight together as both friends and family to win the battle for Ionia's soul.





	Young Ionia

Akali has been tracking this man for nearly an entire day, always keeping just out of his line of sight, lining up her footsteps with his. Though she intends to send a message with his death, Gaoling is a big enough town that it's too dangerous to kill him in public. Plus, the town seems to be run by the Black Lotus Brotherhood, and they're almost as zealously vicious as shadow acolytes. Almost. She needs to watch her step and bide her time.

Her target is a weapons dealer named Fongyu. He did very well for himself during the Noxian invasion, and recently she learned why. He wasn't particularly discriminatory about who he sold to. As many Ionian souls fell to the weapons he sold as Noxian. In fact, he'd made a cute little system out of it--when he got his greedy hands on something new and dangerous, Noxus got it first. Then the Resistance, desperate to counter the Noxians' new toys, would come to him and buy the same weapons for even more than Noxus paid. So much Ionian blood on his hands. That's why he makes a perfect message.

It's her mission in life now. People like this are the real imbalance in Ionia, and she's taken up the task of eliminating them. _Pruning the tree,_  Shen would call it. She can never help the little grin when she thinks of those words. Shen would be so angry to hear her say it.

The final sunset Fongyu will enjoy disappears over the horizon as he turns down an alley between houses to approach one of the town's elegant fountain wells. The entire well is sculpted out of one piece of limestone to create several tiers of water falling over stone lily and lotus blossoms into a broad, deep pool. Gaoling may not have the best people living in it right now, but Akali has to admire the artistry present in even something so simple as a well.

She drops down from the roof behind her target, landing silently on the packed dirt road. A kunai spins around her finger as she makes her final plans. Kunai to the back of his neck, kama to his throat. It shouldn't take any more than that. She's about to loose the kunai when something flickers at the very corners of her vision. The reflection of the street's lanterns in the pool. The lights are wrong, somehow, moving in a way they shouldn't.

A shadow in the pool uncast by any light.

The moment of hesitation as her eyes find him is all he needs. Before she can act, a blade of black and red appears from the water and pierces Fongyu from his stomach up through his ribs, until the tip of the scythe appears in his throat. The scythe's wielder forms out of tendrils of pure darkness on the other end. A young man, no older than Akali herself, dressed in loose pitch black silks, his equally black hair in a long braid nearly reaching his ankles. Beneath the blue-black fringe that's escaped his braid, she can see a painful looking scar stretching across his left eye and over his nose.

He's kind of cute, despite looking a bit foreign, but he's obviously a shadow acolyte. And besides--

"You stole my kill!" blurts out Akali as Fongyu's body collapses lifelessly to the ground.

"Excuse me?" says the shadow assassin. He spins the scythe around him with a flourish, and she catches a glimpse of a clawed gauntlet on his left hand beneath his flowing sleeves and a large red eye in the heel of the blade.

"I was tracking him all day and you just--"

"Should have struck earlier," he says with a shrug, stepping down from the fountain wall with his scythe slung casually over his shoulder. "It's not my fault you're slow, now, is it?"

Furious, she finally looses her spinning kunai at her new target--that arrogant smirk. He vanishes into shadow like he'd never been there, only to rise from her own at her side. "Are those Kinkou tattoos?" he asks conversationally. She strikes at him with the kama in her other hand and he disappears again.

"Fucking asshole shade," she snarls at the darkness, flinging a shuriken at a random shadow on the wall just in case it's him. "Don't you have some babies to eat or something?"

"Wow." He steps out of the wall next to the shuriken, and the way he glances at it as he does tells her she was a lot closer than he's comfortable with. "Is that seriously what people say about us?"

"Fight me," she demands. He's going to regret more than stealing her mark when she strings up his teeth to make a necklace.

The smirk returns to his face, and this time it has a wickedness to it. "Can I have the name of my next target?"

"Jhomen Akali." She reaches into her pack for smoke bombs. 'Target' indeed. He's going to regret his life when she's done with him.

"Shieda Kayn." He spins the scythe in his hands and lowers into a ready stance like she does, both of them watching the other for the first movement.

She's added her own flair to the tattoos, but he knows that blue dragon. The symbol of the Kinkou. Unlike Shen, she doesn't hide it. She's barely wearing anything up top, and he can respect that. Someone else who eschews armor, believing the best way to mitigate strikes is not to take them at all. Perhaps she has Kinkou magic, too. She's going to be sorely disappointed if she's counting on that to surprise him. Her hair is shorter than his--well, _everything_  about her is shorter than him--and she's pulled it back into the messiest tail he's ever seen. It looks like it's just waiting for a brisk breeze to escape that green scarf altogether.

He can practically hear Irelia tutting about it and the thought almost makes him laugh even as his feet push off from the ground and he leaps at Akali, sweeping his scythe in nearly a full circle in the same motion. Akali flings one of her shuriken at him as she flips over the scythe, spinning her kama over her head when her feet find the ground. He sweeps the scythe up at her, and she quickly dodges aside, flinging five kunai at once in his direction only for them to pass harmlessly through his shadow form and dig themselves into the dirt.

Kayn has shadow magic; Akali has an arsenal. He has reach; she has flexibility. Their match is so even they tire at the same rate, and they've barely scratched each other. As much as they're seething at the stalemate, there's something joyous in a perfect rival that neither can deny. This is fun! More fun than either have had in a fight in ages.

"You're pretty good," says Kayn through heavy breaths. They're standing on either side of the fountain, facing each other, the dead body between them completely forgotten.

"You're better than most of Zed's flunkies," she admits, breathing just as harshly.

"Oh, I know." That arrogant smirk again. Time to smack it off, she decides.

She barely steps forward when they hear the sounds of talons on dirt and men yelling, quickly coming closer. They look at each other, then at the corpse of Fongyu, then at the alley from where the noise is coming. A vastayan man with golden hair and plumage rounds the corner, sprints into the alley, and without even a glance at them, dives into the fountain well. A small army of men in deep violet uniforms appear just after he disappears. Kayn vanishes into the shadows and Akali climbs the nearest wall.

The Black Lotus Brotherhood's men arrive to an empty courtyard seemingly occupied only by a fountain well and a dead body. They shout to each other when they spot the corpse.

"Think the vastaya did this?" one says.

"No, feathers and talons didn't make these wounds," another says. "He must've kept running. Doubt the damn bird even noticed."

"Excuse me," Kayn appears leaning against the same wall Akali had climbed. She peeks out over the rooftop. What is he doing?!

The Brotherhood men turn to him. "Are you looking for that vastaya that just ran through?" he asks. His scythe isn't with him, she realizes. "About so tall, gold feathers, kind of ostentatious?"

"That's the one," says a man.

"He went that way." Kayn points with his right hand to an alley leading away from the courtyard.

"Thanks," says the man. Another grabs him as he starts off.

"The merchant," he points out the body.

"He's not getting any deader, and we have to catch the bird now!" snaps the man, ostensibly the group's leader.

As soon as they've disappeared down the alley, the vastaya surfaces, gulping in air desperately. "Oh that was a little too close!" he says, more to himself than to Kayn. "Hey buddy, thanks!"

"You're welcome, 'buddy'," says Kayn, amused, as he draws his scythe from within the wall.

Akali drops down beside him. "I can't believe that worked."

"City guards are the same no matter what uniforms they wear. They're all idiots."

The vastaya pulls himself out of the well, shaking off the water and squeezing it from his golden feather cloak. Akali eyes him curiously. The gold plumage highlighted with pink--she's seen that before. Vlonqo? Weh'le? He's a traveling entertainer. What was that name... Raver? Rakish?

"Rakan," she hits on it. His feathery ears perk straight up and he bows to her.

"At your service, my lady," he says. " _Finally_ , someone in this town who's heard of me."

"What did you do, insult the wrong person?"

"Something like that." He looks up to the sky, as if watching for something.

Kayn follows his gaze. "Rakan, huh... I've heard that name."

"Of course you have!" Rakan tears his eyes from the sky to puff himself up. "I am Rakan! The great song-catcher, battle-dancer, best-looking--"

"Yeah, that's not how I've heard of it." Kayn is still watching the sky. Akali looks up, curious for what he's watching for.

"What have you heard?" she says.

His mouth twists into that _fucking_  smirk. "Unflattering things."

Rakan blows a bit of hair out of his face. "Humans. Well, I gotta go. Thanks for the help!"

Kayn rests his scythe over both his shoulders, his wrists both resting on the haft, looking like some kind of nightmarish farmhand. "What do you say, want to follow?" he says.

Akali gives him a sideways glance. It's like he's totally forgotten they were trying to kill each other five minutes ago. Then again, it _was_  pretty fun. She hasn't had that much fun since Kennen's training when she was a kid. "Sure," she says.

He looks surprised. "Oh," he says, "yeah, sure, I guess you can come too."

"Who else were you talking to?"

She's answered with a laugh as he dissolves into the shadows. "Try to keep up, Akali!" his disembodied voice taunts her. His silhouette appears on the wall, unmistakeable with the scythe, and she runs after it and the golden vastaya.

* * *

Xayah presses herself against the wooden door, straining her ears for the voices on the other side. "Is she still sleeping?" a masculine voice asks.

"Yes, sir," a feminine one replies. "The drugs our contact provided have worked well."

"Keep her that way. We can't have her waking up before our friends arrive."

Heavy footsteps draw closer to the door, and Xayah quickly springs into the air and tucks herself into the curved rafters of the ceiling, far out of sight of ground-bound humans. A large man in layered bone armor over his deep purple uniform emerges from the room. She recognizes him as the leader of the Brotherhood in Gaoling. He may or may not be the town's guard-captain officially--she's never bothered to learn--but he's certainly regarded that way. It's disturbing how many towns the Black Lotus Brotherhood seems to own nowadays.

She came to the Brotherhood's local headquarters in search of an old ritual mask stolen from the vastayan tribe who live in the forest nearby, but instead of it or any other artifacts, she's instead found cages. So far all the ones she's found are empty, but they all have traces of blood, fur, feathers, and magic. She recognizes it all--her very soul cries out whenever she finds more. Vastaya were kept in these cages. Dozens of them.

It's taken longer to comb the headquarters than she intended, and Rakan will be coming around to rendezvous soon. She's never been late for him. Still, if there's one vastaya she can save tonight, she has to try. She plucks a handful of feathers into her hand as she creeps back to the door. This will be quick and silent, and then she'll meet Rakan.

The door is unlocked, which is too bad for the Brotherhood guard inside. Xayah takes her down with only half the razor-sharp feathers she'd prepared. The captive lies on the floor with her wrists and ankles bound behind her despite her unconsciousness. Xayah turns her over and sighs in disappointment. Human. She has long, straight black hair, full pink lips, and wears silk dancer's garb dyed the deep magenta of flowers from northern Navori, trimmed with steel and silver at her wrists, ankles, and shoulders. Why would the Brotherhood take this human captive, when they've only held vastaya in the cages? Human though she is, Xayah can't just leave an unconscious, bound woman with these thugs. She slices through the binds and shakes the woman in a vain effort to wake her up. Those drugs must have been strong. There has to be something...

Just as she's looking around for other options, she hears commotion downstairs. The shouts of guards, the clashing of steel on steel, and the sound of blades whistling through the air. "Shit," she mutters to herself. She had not planned on anyone attacking the headquarters but herself and Rakan's diversion. The human woman will have to wait while she sees what's going on.

She slips into the hall and runs for the stairs, reaching the top at the same moment Rakan appears at the bottom. "Darling!" he says cheerfully, bounding up to meet her.

"Rakan! I told you to wait for my signal!" she chides him, though she's glad to see him unhurt.

"It never came! I got worried," he tells her. "I brought friends! At least, I think they're friends."

Xayah's eyebrows shoot up into her hairline. "What kind of friends?"

"I knew it," says Kayn, stepping out from the wall behind her. Xayah sinks the last two razor quills into his shoulder before she even registers the person she's looking at. He rolls his amber eyes at her.

"Shadow," she says darkly. She's tangled with his type before. A lot.

"What gave it away?" His scythe, slightly taller than he is and significantly taller than her, is still dripping with blood.

"Oh _thanks,_ Kayn, leaving me with two of those assholes by myself," Akali snaps at him as she ascends the stairs.

"Didn't want to steal your kill again," he replies coolly.

"These are your new friends?" says Xayah to Rakan.

"Probably?" He shrugs. "I mean, they helped me out once. And they're... They're really good at killing."

"We're assassins," says Akali. "That's what we do."

"These two are revolutionaries," Kayn explains to Akali. "They've interfered with Master Zed's work several times."

"Your 'master' interferes with the lifeblood of Ionia," Xayah snarls at him.

He plucks her feathers from his shoulder. They've been bloodied, but he seems unbothered. She can see the faint blue shimmer of shadow magic where the feathers pierced his tunic. "So what brings the rebel vastaya here?"

"Nothing you care about, I'm sure." Xayah turns on a talon and starts back down the hall. "But there's an unconscious human in that room over there, you might be more interested in that."

Akali brushes past Kayn into the room. "Oh shit," she says. Is that who she thinks it is?

"Irelia!" Kayn pushes her out of the way to run to Irelia's sleeping form. "How did they..."

"You know her?" says Akali, nonplussed.

"I heard something about her being drugged," says Xayah from the doorway. "Why, is she important or something?"

"She was the leader of the Resistance during the war?" Akali sounds even more disbelieving. "You vastaya need to come out of your trees sometimes."

" _Excuse_  me?"

"Hey, Akali," Kayn interrupts, "do you have anything in that pack that smells really strong? Like, I don't know, rotbloom or something."

"The fact that you think I just carry stink bombs is kind of insulting," replies Akali, but she's pulling a small pouch out of her bag anyway. "I mean, I do, but I hate that you thought that about me."

The moment she opens the pouch, the scent of rotting meat fills the room and all three gag. "That is _revolting!_ " cries Xayah. But the scent does its job--Irelia blinks twice and then scrambles away, coughing so hard she nearly wretches.

Akali seals the pouch back up. "You're welcome."

Irelia looks from Akali to Xayah to Kayn with confusion and fear in her blue eyes. "Kayn? What's going on? Where am I?"

"Black Lotus Brotherhood's housing in Gaoling," says Kayn. "Apparently, you were drugged. What do you remember?"

"Last thing I remember was thinking the tea tasted off..." She rubs her aching head.

"Yeah, that would be the drugs," says Akali.

"My blades. Where are my blades?" Irelia leaps to her feet and stumbles immediately as she does. Kayn catches her with his clawed left hand, and she looks down at it.

"Long story," he says, following her gaze. "Went to Noxus, got a new weapon, I'll tell you later."

"How exactly do you two know each other?" says Akali.

Xayah, meanwhile, looks over her shoulder down the hall. Rakan has wandered off. Again. She's not particularly worried about him, but it makes her nervous when he's gone for too long.

Irelia sags against Kayn, her hands to her head. "My head feels like someone's been standing on it for hours."

"Knock out drugs will do that," says Akali. "You're lucky you weren't shitting yourself while you were out."

"Thanks," says Irelia coldly.

"How close do you have to be to call the blades?" asks Kayn.

"I--I don't know. I haven't been far from them in a while..." She pushes herself from Kayn and takes a few shaky steps forward, hand outstretched. Her eyes close as she takes a long, centering breath.

There's a clatter and a loud cry somewhere in the building. Xayah twists around, fresh quills in her hand. "Rakan?"

Rakan scoots out of a nearby room. "Xayah I found haunted daggers!" He tackles her to the ground just before a barrage of steel flies over them and to Irelia's side. The blades swirl around her and finally settle, hovering in midair in a fan pattern just behind her.

"Woah," says Akali. "I've heard about that but I've never seen in person." The vastaya are also looking up at the floating blades with awe.

"That," says Rakan, "was _amazing!_ " He springs to his feet and circles around Irelia, bumping into Kayn as he does and not noticing at all. "You can control these?"

"The dances I learned--"

"Well of _course_  they're dances! I've never seen a human dance with blades before! You have to show me sometime--oh yeah! I," he bows deeply, "am Rakan! The greatest song-catcher, battle-dancer, best-looking--"

"Where were you when these came flying out?" asks Xayah.

"What? Oh, just down the hall. Found a room full of papers and stuff, so I started pulling them out. You know, because it's uh--what's the word--that kind of spy stuff you know about."

"Can't be intelligence if you have it," says Kayn, and Akali snorts a laugh.

"Well, I don't have it," Rakan either is ignoring the joke or missed it entirely, "it's still in the room."

"Show me," says Xayah. "I want to know where they're taking our people."

He leads her down the hall to the office, and the three humans follow behind. Kayn stays at Irelia's side, concern on his face. Akali frowns at them. "So Irelia, how do you know this jackass?" she asks, sounding less conversational and more accusatory.

"You mean Kayn? We met in the Resistance, years ago." Irelia, for her part, seems mostly confused. "The Order worked closely with my people to free Navori."

"And you're just okay with," Akali gestures at Kayn, "all of that." Kayn rolls his eyes.

"We are all Ionian," says Irelia. "Sorry, what's your name?"

"Jhomen Akali."

"She's Kinkou," adds Kayn.

Akali's eyes harden. "Not anymore, I'm not."

Xayah curses in her own language as she goes through the paperwork on the desk. "What the hell language is this?"

"Noxian," says Irelia, looking over her shoulder. "I recognize it but I can't read it. Kayn, can you...?"

He reaches over Xayah to take the paper. Her long feathered ears rise high above her head and they still barely reach his collarbone. He feels a bit like a stork among ducks. "Lucky for you," he says, looking over the small scroll of vellum, the right size for messenger birds, "it's in Ur-Nox. If it was in Delver or something you'd be shit out of luck. Let's see... Something about tribute to the empire, something about taking back what was given..."

"Hold on," says Akali, "you can read Noxian?"

"Let me focus!" he snaps at her. "I speak it better than I read it."

She's about to ask more questions, but Irelia lays a firm hand on her shoulder and that silences her. Xayah rifles through a ledger, thankfully written in the familiar trade language of Ionia, while Kayn glares at the scroll to remember the runes he'd barely known as a child in the first place.

"Okay," he says finally, "it looks like a threat. The Brotherhood's been funded by Noxus, so they need to provide tribute in return. By the sound of it that tribute is really specific."

"Vastayan slaves," hisses Xayah.

"And the Brotherhood hasn't been paying up, so Noxus is threatening to take back the 'special funds' they gave them. Doesn't say what those are, but knowing Noxus? It's weapons."

"That's why the Brotherhood has been gaining power so quickly," breathes Irelia. "But they've been pushing to rule Navori! If they take control--they'll just be puppets for Noxus."

"Another invasion from the inside out," concludes Akali.

"Zed needs to know about this," says Kayn, rolling up several of the order scrolls in his hand.

"You're taking those?" Xayah points at the messenger bird scrolls. Kayn nods. "Fine. I think I've got a lead on how they've been transporting our people."

"Oh yeah?" he prompts her, but she glares at him.

"You don't need to know that, shade."

"Please," says Irelia, "we are _all_  Ionian. We should be allies in this."

"Tell that to the Order you--"

"Everyone shut up!" barks Akali. "Listen."

Downstairs, a man's shout. A woman's laugh.

Rakan takes point at the door, cloak in hand, while Xayah readies a handful of feather blades. Akali pulls a couple of smoke bombs from her pack. Irelia flares her blades around herself defensively. Kayn melds into the shadows until only the red eye of his wicked scythe is visible, and then not even that.

The guard-captain of Gaoling's Brotherhood, layered bone armor and all, charges up the stairs, polearm in hand, only to be met by Rakan's cloak brushing the tip of his nose. He comes to a confused halt at the sight of a lone young man in the hallway. "Who are you?"

"I am Rakan," says Rakan, annoyed that he has to say it.

"You expect me to believe one vastaya did all of that?" He gestures down the stairs to the carnage below.

Rakan laughs and spreads his cloak out. "Please, sir. I'm not here to kill you." He pulls his cloak back around himself with a flourish to reveal Xayah, her feather-blades already loosed from her fingers. "She is!"

"Nice to unmeet you," says Xayah as her quills find the chinks in his armor.

The guard-captain snarls and lunges forward with his polearm, which she jumps nimbly over and backwards into the hall, giving Irelia room to send her own blades out in a whirling arc in an attempt to knock the spear from his hands. She very nearly succeeds, and his desperate scramble to keep hold leaves him open to her foot in his face.

"You're awake!" he cries out, as much in surprise as fury.

"I apologize for being an inconvenience," she replies.

In the narrow space, a large man with a large weapon is no match for a lithe, nimble dancer, her flying blades, and the quick-footed vastaya backing her up. Irelia cuts through the leather straps of his armor and the seams of his uniform, and where she opens him up, Xayah's quills sink in. Kayn leans against one side of the door frame, Akali on the other side, watching her. "Come on, Irelia," he complains, "are you gonna kill him or not?"

Irelia spares him an icy glare before kicking the man to the ground, her blades forming a ring around his neck, ready to behead him at her single finger's twitch. "Where were you taking me?" she asks him.

"Nowhere," says the man.

"That's a lie. You wouldn't have gone to such lengths to capture me if you weren't planning on something."

" _We_  weren't taking you anywhere."

The man suddenly vanishes from beneath her blades and foot, and in his place is a woman. Her skin is pale as death and her hair as dark as the midnight sky, but her smirking lips are a deep violet, much like her strange clinging gown. Irelia slams her blades down into the woman's neck, but the pale woman vanishes the moment they make contact, only to appear behind her with a laugh.

"Little birds causing trouble." Her voice is lilting, musical, and the sound of it makes Irelia's thoughts slow to a crawl. She twirls to meet the woman's face, feeling as though her every motion takes thrice the effort it should. The pale woman caresses her face with a hand like ice. "But you're here, regardless. How you've grown in ten years, my dear."

She wants to speak, to ask the woman who she is, how she makes Irelia's entire body feel like iron and her thoughts feel like mud, but the words don't come. She can only moan at the touch, her eyes sliding closed, wanting nothing more than to sleep...

The touch vanishes, and all the heaviness in Irelia's body disappears with it. Her eyes snap open to see Kayn wrenching his scythe out of the ground in front of her, its red eye narrowed in a mirror of its wielder's expression. The pale woman has appeared behind him, her perfect features twisted into a sneer as he turns to face her. Akali takes a running start and uses Kayn's own back as a springboard to leap up and fling an arc of kunai at the woman, whose image distorts and splits into five before recombining down the stars, where Xayah and her quills are waiting for her.

"Fighting her's useless," says Xayah, pulling back the quills that passed through the woman and into the wall. "She's an illusion."

"She felt real," breathes Irelia.

They follow the woman down the stairs to the main room and over a dozen corpses. Some were felled by kunai or kama, but the majority bear much greater wounds, many dismembered or decapitated. The work of a large and wicked scythe.

"My my," says the pale woman. The guard-captain stands in the midst of the carnage, still and silent, his polearm fallen from his fingers. The woman steps elegantly over a corpse to pat his chest affectionately. "This was the work of the Blade of Millennia? Far more promising than I'd hoped. Why don't you come home, dear boy? The city misses you."

In response, Kayn lunges for her, his scythe passing harmlessly through air as she reappears elsewhere in the room, laughing. "And of course, Shen's protégé couldn't be left out. What would your mother think of your version of his vision, I wonder?"

"Lady," says Akali, "shut the fuck up."

Rakan looks to his companions as they all watch the woman, furious with her but unable to do anything to her. A smile splits his face. He hums a song, gathers magic around his fingertips. A golden feather appears in his hand, glimmering with energy.

Irelia glances at him over her shoulder. "Is that you humming?"

He steps forward, twisting around to face her as he does. "It's a good song, isn't it? I don't remember the name but I call it--" He suddenly spins, his golden cloak flashing with magic, and not even the pale woman sees the feather fly. Of all things, the feather hits her and explodes on impact, illuminating the room with a gold-green light that settles onto magic like dust.

Kayn and Xayah both see it: The faint gold-violet chain that connects the pale woman to the silent guard-captain.

"Ballad of the Dawnbreaker," finishes Rakan, bowing deeply so the two can rush forward, Kayn leaping over Rakan with scythe outstretched and surrounded by Xayah's violet quills. The moment the man is without a heart in his chest, the pale woman's image vanishes, though her laugh echoes through the room.

The five all stand there, staring in shocked silence at each other, for a long moment. Finally, Akali speaks up. "We should get out of here."

"The human's right," says Xayah.

"We need to talk." Irelia grasps Xayah's arm. "Please. Just hear me out."

Xayah pulls her arm away, but she can't deny the blade dancer has piqued her curiosity in a way few humans ever have. "All right. Just not here."

"There's a ramen shop whose owner I know," says Akali. "I've been staying in his back room. If you want to talk, we can talk there."

* * *

Kayn steps out of the shadows next to the lanterns and noren of the ramen shop, only to encounter Irelia standing in front of him, waiting for him. "Before we go in," she says, "we need to talk."

"Out in the open?"

"Kayn..." She takes his left arm and pushes the sleeve up to reveal that his claws aren't a gauntlet, but a chitinous armor grown over the skin, and the skin that's visible has turned red and scaled. The power of the scythe has taken hold in his dominant hand, twisting and corrupting his flesh into something wholly inhuman. "What have you done to yourself?"

"Zed sent me to retrieve the Blade of Millennia," says Kayn quietly, watching her fingers as she caresses the strange chitin and scales of his arm. "The Noxians had uncovered it, and we couldn't let them have it. So I took it for myself. He is a living weapon, Irelia. A will and mind of his own, and so powerful..."

"A power that corrupts," she sighs.

"That can be _controlled._  Don't you lecture me about this, too."

"Wasn't Zed pleased?"

He drops his gaze, his mouth twisting at the memory. "Less than I thought he'd be."

"Hey." Akali folds her arms, watching them. "Can you two have your little lovers' spat later? Your ramen's gonna get mushy."

Both of them look absolutely disgusted at the words _lovers' spat_  but they follow Akali to the cramped back room of the ramen shop, where five steaming bowls sit on a table. Two have been claimed by Xayah and Rakan, and a third has Akali's mask lying next to it. Kayn sets his scythe against the wall, and Irelia's blades hover around it almost protectively.

"So," says Irelia while Kayn beside her immediately starts slurping down noodles, "I think we need to start with introductions. I don't think all of us know each other's names. I am Xan Irelia."

"Fhieda Kaynf," between slurps.

"Jhomen Akali. Do they not feed you in the Order or something?"

"I'm Xayah."

"You all know who I am!" Rakan gives them all a challenging look.

"Rakan," the four reply in various levels of exasperation.

"I take it none of us recognize whatever that was," says Irelia. "The woman."

"What exactly did she do to you, Irelia?" asks Xayah. "You went pale and your eyes..."

"I... it was strange. Like every thought had to fight its way through tar."

"Definitely some kind of enchantment, but I've never heard of anything like it. So enchantments and illusions... that was quick thinking with the reveal, Rakan."

"Well, I figured if it works on shadow clones," he shrugs. Kayn looks up from his ramen with his mouth full and Rakan grins at him. "It was pretty similar magic, you know? Projections are projections are projections."

"Except she was using a living person as an essence anchor. Don't think we've even seen shades do that."

Kayn swallows a mouthful that makes Akali wince. "Not like that we don't."

"What about that scythe of yours? Does it steal souls or whatever you do?"

"You don't steal souls, do you?" He looks back at the scythe's eye, which blinks at him. "No, he doesn't. Didn't think so, not enough room in there with his ego."

"You just talked to your scythe."

"Why are all the hot ones crazy?" mutters Akali.

He sucks a long noodle into his mouth. "All right, his name is Rhaast, he's a living weapon, and I can hear his voice."

"Wow," says Xayah, "he really is crazy."

"'Crazy' is attacking Master Zed in his own shrine."

"Is it really crazy if it works?"

"You realize I should kill you right--"

_"Enough!"_  Irelia slams her hand on the table hard enough to make the bowls jump. "You're both forgetting why we're here. Noxus is using our own people to destroy us from within. They've turned the Brotherhood into an infection and _all_  Ionians will suffer if we can't stop it. We have to be allies. If we waste our energy fighting each other, no one will be left to fight the true enemy when the time comes." All eyes are on her. She looks over the table, her face slowly flushing. "Just... stop yelling at each other."

"Think I'm starting to see where you get your reputation," says Akali.

"I can't tell if that's a compliment."

"So what exactly do you suggest, Irelia?" asks Kayn.

She hesitates. What _is_ she suggesting? Again, they are looking to her for leadership, and she didn't ask them to. Just as the silence stretches into uncomfortable, she finds her voice. "A truce. Whatever reasons we may have to fight each other, set them aside. We are all Ionian."

"You realize not everyone thinks that about us," says Xayah.

"I don't care what 'everyone' thinks. That's what _I'm_  saying. Fight at my side, and that's what is true."

"They're taking my people."

"Then they are also mine." Irelia's blue eyes meet Xayah's vibrant gold and holds her gaze with stubborn intensity. Xayah's ears twitch.

"Truce," says Xayah.

"What about you, ex-Kinkou?" says Kayn to Akali.

"I'm not going to work with the whole order. I have a score to settle with Zed, for one thing." She leans back in her seat, arms crossed over her short halter top. "But you, I can tolerate. Truce."

"Truce," agrees Kayn. "We have stronger enemies to fight."

Irelia looks expectantly at Rakan, whose ears perk with surprise at her gaze. "What, me? I'm with Xayah."

"You haven't been listening to anything, have you?"

"Nope!"

"You were thinking about your feathers again, weren't you?" says Xayah.

"Actually, I was thinking about getting a tattoo. Or working my feathers into a pattern like one! Maybe I'll make it your name..."

"You're so sweet, Rakan."

Kayn, rolling his eyes, mutters something Akali recognizes as a Noxian swear, and she doesn't need a translation to know he just said what she's thinking.


End file.
